Grrl Power #918 – Ghost fight!
I didn’t really have any idea how this fight was going to end when I introduced HenchWench, but a lot of you were like “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if…” and I agreed. So yeah, I’m super telegraphing the next page, and I apologize in advance if Arianna doesn’t use super proper lawyer speak, but hopefully you guys will be amused anyway.
Concretia never learned to fight. She’s too slow in her stone form for anything but basic ass punching and grappling (depending on the Mohs scale – if she formed a body out of talc or something, she’d be, well, not fast. Like, human speed. But then you could fuck her up with a steel toed boot or a bucket of water. Her concrete form is best described as “lumbering” and anything harder she becomes noticeably slower) And as has been established in the comic, supers are rare enough that they don’t usually grow up in clusters, so she never really needed to learn how to fight. Especially considering that if you smash her golem, she can just form a new one, and regular solid objects can’t affect her concrastral projection. When the evil strip-miners or company-that-wanted-to-shut-down-the-ski-resort or whatever threatened her town, she had no trouble running them out of town.
HenchWench, on the other hand, probably has known other supers for some time. After reading some discussion in the comments, I decided she’s not a contract lawyer, but a paralegal, as they don’t have the same ethical requirements as an actual lawyer. I know it’s weird thinking of lawyers as having ethics, but the point is, you can’t disbar a paralegal for literally being evil.
That weird goosenecked yacht is where the bad guys were keeping Concretia’s body. I hope that’s clear. Apparently that yacht is some crazy concept design, and the gooseneck could lower to the water, and the goose head is actually a detachable speedboat. I was looking for yacht references to draw from, and I saw that and said, “Yeah, that’s definitely the boat these turds would sail around in.”
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aaaaaand we will have come full circle this Monday ….. how do you get rid of an OP villain’s advantage …. a good lawyering ……
Today we learned, if you have someone in a position to choke them out, you don’t try to get them to surrender by threatening to choke them out, you go straight to choking them out.
*Concretia comes to in a hospital bed*
Concretia: Where… *gasp* My body!!! *hugs herself* Oh, sweet, sweet flesh, how I missed you!
Dr. Bindi: Other than some muscle atrophy from being in a coma for three months, you’re healthy enough to be released.
C: Great! Then I’m free to go-
Maxima: AHEM.
Dr. Bindi: … INTO Arc-SWAT custody.
C: *sigh* Crap.
M: Concretia, AKA Consuela Roca of Queens, New York, I’m placing you under arrest for multiple accounts of assault and property damage…
C: This is BULLSHIT!!
M: … court of law. You have the right…
C: I WAS COERCED!! MULTIPLE TIMES!! First by that Vehemence asshole, then by *shudder* fucking Mask Daddy and his cabal!
M: …an alternative to incarceration, you can choose to work off your debt to society…
C: So it’s either imprisonment or forced conscription into your army? Fuck your ‘Pow-lice’! I’m an American citizen, I have my rights! I’ll get a lawyer! I’ll fight this all the way-
Sydney: Oh yeah, that reminds me! For your help with HenchWench! *tosses Concretia a paper-wrapped parcel*
*Concretia looks down at parcel, eyes go wide. Tears open parcel, takes two huge bites out of the sandwich, lies back and chews contentedly*
C: Mmmph, ow Gaw, sho goo… mmHmmm.. don ephum caw bow duh pickows… mmmph mmph…tash buhs, shingh yo schwee shong to me… mmph mmm *gulp* *glances over at Max, sighs* Ah guesh ah do need to wearn to fie bettah… *swallows* Fine, where do I sign up?
*Max and Dr. Bindi both glare at Sydney*
Sydney: What?? More flies with honey, right? And she was totally low blood sugar, Doc, you shoulda caught that. That sandwich fixed multiple problems.
Betting she brought in an Earl of Sandwich.
I wanna upvote this!
to be honest given we don’t know how far that group extends that was holding her on that yacht, and chances are (easy bet) the entire organization was not on that boat, and they know who she is, where she lives, and other personal details. Concretia will need to at least go into the witness protection program; honestly joining Arch Swat would work out too, get some training (which she may want after seeing someone use her powers better than her), as well as living there places her body under better protection than any safe house.
Assuming the different colored hood of the guy getting shot meant he was 2nd in command and not head boss being an idiot showing up in public to kidnap and interrogate a super while a super battle is going on
depending on how big this group is he may not have even been THAT high up. If this is some wannabe Illuminati crime syndicate, or just a bunch of wealthy jerks with high ambitions, ect… worst case scenario these were a human group working for a supernatural being group wanting to unlock the powers of Supers to apply to themselves…vampires especially may take issue with humans out evolving them in power over time so want to find a way to gain the powers of supers added to their power to stay ontop.
there are a lot of possibilities, heck they could be some Human Enhancement Project guys, or want to learn to turn regular humans into supers either to enhance all mankind or just themselves to become god-kinds of the world.
we know very little about them right now so a lot is up in the there. Best case for Archon, it was a small upstart group and they got most of them, worst case; is a much larger organization with deep roots and deeper pockets with ties to law enforcement and politicians that can go to ground if need be. So captain chili sauce was either a high ranking member of a small group, or just a low ranking handler, a supervisor over one project out of many.
For all we know, the woman with the mask in the splash page could be their big boss. :)
Although if so, that might be bad since the LLC Operating Agreement would have her name on it, which would be bad for a secret identity.
True, but given the wacky rules HW seems to operating under, maybe it works just as well if the boss signs using her cape name.
I’ll grant you that HW’s LLC operating agreement is completely perpendicular to how an operating agreement works. :)
Which is hopefully one of the big reasons why Arianna is going to trounce all over HW.
I picture Arianna listening impatiently to HW monologuing, then breaking in to school her on basic contracts. “No, that’s not how your powers work. At all.” Arianna using her powers in the service of good is going to be fun.
So many people with so many delusions.
Dis gonna be FUN!
(Well, probably not for Henchie!)
However large or small a part of the overall operation the ‘Supers LLC’ comprises, I don’t think its formation documents would directly implicate anyone higher up in the structure.
The LLC was used to create a single collective entity for purposes of employing Hench Wench, in order to jam multiple people into the single ’employer’ position from which her Power takes reference. Therefore, if the LLC ‘layer’ had a layer formally above it, HW’s Power would take reference from that higher layer – the power stunt of the LLC would be wasted. She would need the LLC to be a separate entity, acting as a subcontractor but not formally integrated. Details of the connection to the larger operation might be somewhere in the LLC’s secondary documents (about what it does), but would not be in its primary documents (what it is). (Apologies for probably misusing terms in that last sentence!)
You’re overlooking something. It’s an LLC. ALL corporate officers have to be listed (in their legal identities, no less) for it to be valid. So, all officers, all real identities (unless someone thought ahead, and they didn’t – see #919 for why I’m sure of this).
Now, this isn’t going to list EVERYONE, just those involved in managing the LLC. So if The Interrogator wasn’t the big boss, his name is still on this highly illegal document (I don’t remember where I said it before, so I’ll repeat myself – it is illegal to form an LLC to commit illegal acts).
You’re assuming that the LLC forms the entirety of the organisation, rather than being a part of it with a special purpose. The top layer of the LLC would have to be listed – but we see that ‘The Interrogator’ is giving orders to a member of that top layer, from the position of a superior. We therefore know that the LLC is a separate entity, itself employed/instructed by whatever organisation The Interrogator represents. It’s like taking a discrete component out of a larger machine: you can examine the component, but that won’t necessarily tell you the details of the thing it plugs into
There’s really no way that Archon would arrest Concretia when it’s painfully clear that she was doing this against her will as a hostage, while being tortured, then as soon as she was free she fought alongside Archon against the villains.
They are not going to waste the resources to arrest or try her for.
Plus the DA would have professional responsibility reasons to not try to convict her.
Plus the P.R. would be worse than the P.R. of arresting people who Vehemence made fight. Which is one of MANY reasons why almost no one in the Vehemence fight was arrested unless they had open warrants out for their arrest, like Jabberwokky, Opal, and Vektor.
Also yes, forcing Concretia to join Archon or use a trumped up fake charge would be unconstitutional, as opposed to how they got Jabberwokky to join as a work release program since Jabberwokky actually committed crimes and had warrants out for her arrest, or how they got Heatwave, Achilles, and Mr. Amorphous to join since they were also committing crimes (vigilanteism), so they offered those three a chance to join INSTEAD of being vigilantes, where they get paid for doing exactly what they were doing as vigilantes, but legally.
Concretia, on the other hand, is not a vigilante. She had no warrants out for her arrest as far as we’ve seen in the comic. She was not a willing participant in the current criminal action, so has no mens rea, and was literally a hostage who both tried to prevent Sydney from getting killed (even before being free) then immediately turned to help law enforcement as soon as she was free.
The scenario presented is just wrong on many many levels. And I’m the person who has repeatedly argued that what Archon was doing with Jabberwokky was completely justified and legal. :)
I’m sure ARCHON can, will and have done shady stuff but they are far from stupid. Trying to force Concretia into service would probably backfire.
They’re under a lot of scrutiny though as a new government agency. I think that violating people’s constitutional rights right out of the gate for an agency full of literal ‘superheroes’ might be a bit of a problem, especially public relations-wise. We’ve already seen that most of what ARCHON does is at least on its face legal. Even the ‘shady stuff’ like staging a bank robbery, when it was staged with the permission of the bank.
What’s being proposed here would not be even slightly legal, and would be a massive violation of constitutional rights. I don’t think DaveB is going to go the ‘Marvel Civil War 2’ route, where superheroes do thinks which outright violate the Constitution so blatantly (like how Captain Marvel suspended habeas corpus for citizens and arrested people, holding them without a trial, for crimes that they have not committed, Minority Report-style).
PS, I really despised the movie Minority Report mainly because of very dumb people who thought it was a good idea to arrest people for crimes that they have not yet committed which are based only on future quantum probability. Tom Cruise was like that in the movie. He was all for it… until it happened to him so he could see what an idiotic system of law that it was. It also reminds me of Judge Dredd’s talk with Fergie in the 1995 movie.
Where Dredd thinks their system is perfect, until he’s the one who is wrongfully judged.
Fergie Herman Ferguson: That was a mistake!
Judge Dredd: The Law doesn’t make mistakes.
Fergie Herman Ferguson: Really? Then how do you explain what happened to YOU? You can’t… can you?!
The problem with the idea of minority report was that A) they should’ve sent in social workers (with armed police to back them up, depending on the crime) to offer an intervention instead. Therapy, etc. Crime rate would still go down and you could demonstrate that the program worked without sending people to ‘coma prison’ for what appears to be stupid reasons. B) The seeers should’ve all be voluntary, and I’m pretty sure they kinda weren’t – with all the trappings like time off, a huge paycheck, etc.
Given that the only crime that could be predicted in the movie was murder (usually premeditated IIRC), being backed by armed police would be pretty much an “always” thing. And yes, the Minority Report system has many, many flaws (which to be fair is the whole point of the movie).
Thing is, Dredd wasn’t wrong: the Law didn’t make a mistake, Judge Dredd shot those people, indisputable (by anyone other than a lawyer) fact
It’s just that the Judges arrested the wrong Judge Dredd
Again, The Law doesn’t make mistakes, the system is fine, it’s just the majority of the Judges are only human and they can only work on the information the are given
Genetic code tagging didn’t make a mistake either. The mistake was that there wasn’t a second judge with the same genetic coding in the system. In Dredd’s specific case this was an omission of information that made the error happen.
Actually the law did make a mistake with Dredd. And with Fergie. It was applied on people who did not actually BREAK the law, which was the point that Fergie was making to Dredd. And Dredd refused to ever acknowledge that the people who apply the law are ever fallible until it happened to HIM.
Sort of the same way that Tom Cruise’s character refused to acknowledge that the Minority Report system was massively flawed and probably was putting many innocent people in jail or killing them, until he was the victim of it. Same as how, when Miles Morales was accused of a future crime, which was only one possible future, people like Kamala Khan were suddenly not wanting to arrest him, because it was one of her friends, when she seemed all too willing to arrest or maim people who were not her friends, or were strangers. Or when Tony Stark said to Captain Marvel ‘What if he predicts that YOU would commit a crime in the future?’ and Captain Marvel started saying ‘well that depends’ when, if it happen with anyone else, she had an absolute statement of ‘arrest them without any sort of due process whatsoever.’
Captain Marvel was a hypocrite.
Kamala Khan was a hypocrite.
Tom Cruise was a hypocrite.
And Judge Dredd was a hypocrite.
And the only one I can even say was an understandable hypocrite was Dredd since he was taught this way of life from birth. But he was still a hypocrite and when it was thrown in his face he finally realized it. And you can notice this because when he’s reinstated as a Judge, Fergie doesnt go back to prison. :)
yeah Civil War 2 has been well accused of bad writing and Out of character behavior (honestly this always happens with big cross-overs in Marvel, heck first Civil War, Secret Invasions, and even back with Onslaught, there have been several instances of characters contradicting themselves or behaving very different between series as different writers were doing those different books at the same time); the writer-in fighting problem on what direction to take characters in really stands out when you have them all doing them at the same time.
Which all comes down to why I tell people its okay to like a character but not the comics. Marvel has some serious identity issues over the last ten years especially as they try to draw in people with constant big events, push movie characters, alter characters to be more like their movie counterparts, and have been really inconsistent lately with continuity, character personalities, and even power levels.
a lot of characters are hypocrites over these last few years especially as they all shift around their behaviors a lot between writers.
Fergie did break the Law: tampering with city ordinance (or however you explain him hiding in the trash robot)
People can change their stand-point based on new information, that does not make them a hypocrite
Concretia will be angry at the people who hurt her, this is a certainty.
She will be happy to be freed.
She will likely be grateful to Sydney, Cora and to a lesser extent, Archon.
She will almost certainly want to learn to use her powers a bit better and now that she is on everyone’s radar? She has to find a way to do it legally or the people who grabbed her may do it again (Or someone worse. In super hero stories, there is always someone worse!).
She may ASK to join Archon.
I think she and Sydney would get along like a house on fire. But is that a GOOD thing…?
She might ask to join ARCHON, true. She might not. People who get saved by police don’t usually then decide to join the police, even if they’re grateful to the police, because not everyone wants to be a police officer. :)
It would be fun to see Concretia join ARCHON – she seems like a great character. I just was saying that the scenario above of forcing her to join or be arrested for a false criminal charge would be unconstitutional, as opposed to the deals made with Jabberwokky (who had an actual warrant out for her arrest for actual crimes that she actually committed under her own volition, like robbery and assault and battery), or Heatwave, Achilles, and Amorphous (who were vigilantes before joining Archon).
Concretia is neither a vigilante OR has arrest warrants out for her, as far as we can see in the comic.
And due to the apparantly long period of time she has been depicted in comic. There’s from a lore perspective a pretty low chance of missing pieces.
More specific.
She has been flash investigated after the Vehemence incident, since that happened to all opponents, but probably not deeper, because being forced to participate in criminal activities by kidnap would probably have come up in the questioning, controlling her speech is near impossible if she can become a ghost and forcing her to flee would’ve let to a lot of suspicion. This implies she didn’t have a lot of warrants and other stuff back than(just as not having a detailed profile in the glasses database in the fight), which in turn implies that she hadn’t been yet kidnapped back then(, because the whole point of kidnapping her was to let her commit crimes and thus work herself up the watchlist).
Due to Sydney kind of still being a recruit/cadet(Dave seems to have switched halfway through the comic) we’ve strong reason to suspect this is within a two year interval, so there is very little chance of her cranking up an additional criminal record on such a short notice.
if nothing else till they can ascertain the how big a group the hood guys are and what connection they have with the mercenaries that attacked Maxima, and took the stasis gun which apparently nobody has noticed yet was taken, Concretia should be placed in protective custody.
Well, not everyone who is saved by a superhero has superpowers either. :p
Concretia doesn’t seem like a bad person, all told.
I AM looking forward to seeing how Ariana destroys Henchwench.
Are you still puling that crap?
We don’t know if Cree does or does not have a warrant or is considered a vigilante because she had legged it well before the fight ended!! Same with Hex and Glow-bug
We didn’t see what happened to Nose-Boop Guy either, only ones we can confirm are: Boiler-Plate, Kevin, Vektor, Jabbers and Opal (and we only know about Boiler-Plate and Opal because they were being used as examples of, in order, the Due Processing and Individualized Incarcerations)
It’s assumed the vast majority of the combatants were at least processed, but we never saw that, and certainly never saw Cree again since that panel showing her claymored-golem near Peggy
“There’s really no way that Archon would arrest Concretia when it’s painfully clear that she was doing this against her will as a hostage, while being tortured, then as soon as she was free she fought alongside Archon against the villains.” – Pander
Arrest her with a realistic prospect of conviction? Probably not. Got through the motions of ‘arresting’ her, maybe even arranging a day in court, so as to make sure that this precedent gets publicly established in case law? I’m not sure how the technicalities of the USA’s legal system work, whether there would be an advantage in pre-emptively jumping through those hoops. In UK law at least, I think there are some aspects where it’s a lot easier to act quickly and conclusively later if you have a precedent case to point to rather than having to make the argument from scratch.
to add to this- arresting her is totally legit given the situation. It also establishes a break in information. due to the multiple sensitivities involved and the need to protect her from retaliation this makes things look normal. charges can be dropped, plea bargains made, immunities granted. and you can give an external law focused program ‘American Society to Protect Meta-human Humanity’ to confidentially intervene and give Concreta an advocate to establish precedents for exactly this kind of thing, and when possible release a bevy of books, films, podcasts, Q-anon posts, Reddit threads, etc etc add nauseating to warn people that this kind of coersion/kidnapping is a Really Bad Idea. though do leave out that weird round Cora used. kids might find it and god help us invent the thing.
Sorry, Pander, where does that backstory come from? I don’t recall anything about specific other Arc members being recruited that way. It would fit into the page where marble maiden was shown, but I don’t recall those details.
Not sure if it was explained In-Comic or simply in their Cast-Bio, but it was explained (somewhere) that HAM were a vigilante trio who were given a chance to join Archon instead of going to prison
Then she upchucks the sandwich because she has been on a steady diet of TPM (Total Protein Matrix) for the last three months. Shit is great for keeping alive you are feed intravenous, no nasty feeding tubes or need for a stomach just straight in through the arm or leg. Makes feeding really easy hook up the bag and thirty minutes later your done. Her stomach hasn’t been used if she is on it and even if they are force feeding her that is just liquid as well which is similar to TPM. The good Doctor would stop the sandwich from reaching her. Mom was on it after her gastric bypass for a month, they then slowly got her back onto solids.
Yeah I considered that when I wrote it. Connie probably will regret eating the sandwich later, but right now, the sensual delight of tasting and eating after so long in essentially a forced coma is overriding her good sense.
The superpower of having the superpowers of any bad guys you work for is screwed up enough that I’m wondering if Henchwench’s origin story involves a Djinn and three poorly worded wishes.
Drink: You have three wishes.
HW: I wish I had the biggest boobs on Earth.
Djinn: Granted. You have two wishes left.
Hench Wench falls over and finds out she can’t stand up.
HW: I wish I hadn’t asked for that.
Djinn: Granted. You have one wish left.
HW: Damn it, now I’m back where I started. Look, my boss is an evil asshole who’s always getting away with crap. I just wish I could do that kind of stuff too.
Djinn: Granted. You can now do whatever your evil asshole boss can do.
Damn it, I missed correcting one of autocorrupt’s errors.
Djinn: Sorry, you’re out of wishes. Autocorrupt wins again!
This scenario is hilarious and I love everything about it.
Ooo I know this one!
“Cold Turkey” Bump in the Night (TV series) 16:30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FggSQtpdEo
I’m going to guess, with all their resources, they bought the company.
Too time sensitive and likely to fail.
You have to a. locate all/60% of the owners, b. get them all to agree on a purchase, c. find a way of paying these people accept and works within a pay(cash) and d. find out it’s jurisdiction.
Disassembling it is probably a lot easier through the more hasty parts of the legal system, because they have everything they need on a silver platter and a team of lawyers ready:
– The manager and some shareholders bragging about a list of illegal things, like rules against firing her against her permission and the company having the goal of criminal conspiracy.
– Multiple shareholders in a position where they can be easily questioned for information.
– Life video footage of like a thousand independent sources(the tourists) and all the witnesses you could want.
– A meeting of shareholders over the phone, which they obviously recorded.
– Gross property damage directly linked to the firm.
– Many people who were endangered by the firm’s practices.
– A case of signing under duress
– The name of the company
– A list of phone numbers of people in the hasty parts in the court system
If they bring this all up it will obviously take much too long, but they don’t need to, because most of these offenses are enough to get the company dismantled and Ariana can probably find the one that can be done the fastest
I don’t know for sure, but I think calling the secretary of state of the right jurisdiction with the information is a lot faster than going to court or convincing all owners.
I’ll just say this. Every super villian who wants HW to not have their powers: “I quit!”
Let HW have all the powers of the supervillians *in* the LLC. Not the former ones.
Actuallt, hat might already be happening. HW felt the rebar in the her, which Brut might not have. She hasn’t been shown flying for the last couple of scenes.
Aiana just wants to watch HW’s face, as Concretia throws herself and HW onto the ebar again, and Concretia verbally quits the LLC… leaving HW impaled above her on the steel bar?
“Let’s get the most eye-catching ship possible to hide Concretia on! Nobody will figure it out!”
you joke, but A fancy high dollar boat would: Have more places to hide the facilities needed to do the job, since its blanking huge (16 meter head) more and bigger contact with land to hide the distinctive shipments needed to support concreta, and because of the presumed money involved will garner restraint from port authorities.
Why would anyone suspect there was a super being held in that boat? There are a ton of weird rich people boats and others coming and going. Hell I could sit in the dock and there could be so much horrible things happening on those boats you don’t want to think about.
Police #1: “OK, so our informant said the hostage is being held on one of the boats in this marina, but couldn’t specify which one. Any guesses?”
Police #2: “I vote ‘not the one that’s obviously owned by someone with enough money to make our lives hell if we annoy them!’ ”
Police #3: “Well no-one would be stupid enough to use something that flashy for a secret base. Let’s start with the discreet little cabin cruisers, they’re like the water equivalent of a white Transit van.”